What Are The Impacts of Racial Microaggressions on Cognitive Performance?

Student: Ezra De La Cruz

Faculty Mentor: Evan Lintz

Psychology

College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts

Racial microaggressions are comments or actions that subtly communicate bias or prejudice. Previous work has suggested that being the target of a microaggression can have adverse impacts on cognitive function; however, few of these studies actually provide experimental evidence for these effects, and the majority of these studies used the Stroop task—a task that broadly measures cognitive control. While cognitive control does underlie learning, it inadequately explains, in terms of the actual cognitive mechanisms, what may be compromised. The current study aims to use more targeted measures of attention and working memory, and critically, these types of tasks have not been previously incorporated in the literature. Using tasks that direct attention and working memory usage is essential, as working memory is a cognitive process that is important for all basic mechanisms, and attention plays a critical role in processing information. Providing evidence that illustrates the role that racial microaggressions play on these cognitive mechanisms is crucial to assist current and future diverse students in the education system, as higher education trends toward an increasingly diverse educational landscape. Participants will be exposed to short video clips that include a microaggression, before and after completing two cognitive tasks. Data collection is set to begin in Fall 2025. It is hypothesized that exposure to racial microaggressions will negatively affect cognitive functioning for the participants whose racial identity matches that of the targets of the microaggression in the video clip.